Testing MC/Serviceguard

[Subramanian_2]

Hi,
I have a very naive question. I am working for a product which I need to certify as cluster-aware. I have written down all the scripts to be deployed with MC/ServiceGuard. I have the Serviceguard software. I also have two HP-UX servers which I would be using as the cluster nodes. However I am yet to get the shared disks (SCSI / SAN) which I guess would be needed for testing my cluster scripts.

What I want to know is if there is any way by which I can Install Serviceguard and test my scripts (for package failover) even if there is no shared disk available? i.e by using Samba or something else to simulate the shared disks?

Please help.

Regards,
Subu

[Duncan Edmonstone · Accepted solution]

Subu,

You do really need proper shared disk to qualify your testing properly. However, while you are witing you could do some basic testing by setting up a single node cluster. Obviously a 1-node cluster needs no shared storage, but you can probably test 50% of your scripts with a package running on a single node (start/stop, monitoring, crash recovery, LAN card failover etc.)

HTH

Duncan

[Bharat Katkar]

Subu,
It's not possible to use Samba/CIFS since shared storage should only be visible and used by the nodes who are member's of the cluster. Well as suggested above who will be only able to check single node operations.

You can get familiar with different command, package behaviour and clustering concepts by the time you get shared storage for your cluster.

regards,

[Geoff Wild]

If you have 2 nodes and no shared storage, you can install your product on both of them, then configure your package without a volume group and test fail over that way.

A package does not need to have storage to operate. You can configure a package to just start an application.

Rgds...Geoff

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Geoff is correct, but you need to bear in mind that a 2 node cluster needs a cluster lock mechanism to act as an arbitrator (when the two nodes can't communicate with each other). In the absence of any shared storage to provide a cluster lock disk, you will need a 3rd system to act as an arbitrator using this software:

http://software.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=B8467BA

This doesn't have to be a HP-UX host, it can also be a SUSE or RedHat Linux host if you have one available.

HTH

Duncan

[Ted Buis]

What about using something simple in the package like xclock to display to an independent X-terminal display?

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi Subu,

If you have don't have shared disk, then you can use Quorum server if you have another HP system in the same subnet (preferred). Look at the following document for the information on the quorum server.

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/B3936-90073/B3936-90073.html

Not having shared disks means, you will need to have a copy of code and data on each server and it's particularly difficult if not possible if you have a database in the package.

-Sri

[Subramanian_2]

Thanks folks for the replies so far. Now that you have mentioed setting up a single-node cluster, can someone help me out with the exact steps needed for that?

I tried using SAM to create a single node cluster, but it does not show any node informantion.

Help please